


C.J.'s Butter Smile

by DragonintheLibrary



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Air Force One, Airplane Sex, Butter Butter at the Iowa State Fair, F/M, Hand Jobs, Shipping all of your coworkers with each other, The intellectual allure of butter sculptures at the Iowa State Fair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 01:47:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18356102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonintheLibrary/pseuds/DragonintheLibrary
Summary: Toby knew, in his head, that C.J. wasn’t flirting with him when her face grew light and her whole body was buoyant and she was excited about butter.  She was flirting with life, not with him.Takes place during Season 3 Episode 12, “The Two Bartlets”





	C.J.'s Butter Smile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rachelsandwich](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rachelsandwich/gifts).



> I wrote this for rachelsandwich awhile ago. We had just watched "The Two Barlets" and we talked about how much we loved C.J. and Toby together, so I wrote this for her late at night while she was sleeping. She has kindly allowed me to share it here with anyone else who might like to peruse it. I hope you enjoy it.

C.J. seemed five years younger at the beginning of the flight to Iowa, talking about nonsensical butter sculptures at the fair. She always seemed young when she was excited about something, and especially young when she was excited about something trivial. Her face, which was usually set inside the strict parameters of Press Secretary Expressions, would grow light and young. Toby knew, in his head, that C.J. wasn’t flirting with him when her face grew light and her whole body was buoyant and she was excited about butter. She was flirting with life, not with him. Toby knew that. He knew it.

He had almost convinced himself that he knew it.

So yes, of course, logically, C.J. didn’t flirt with Toby. Wasn’t flirting with Toby right now. But it was difficult for him to remember that logic when she was smiling at him. So he muttered something about the phone call from Sam that he was utterly uninterested in taking at that moment. Toby turned away from a smiling, buoyant C.J. and took the call from Sam.

When you worked as much as all of them did, the outside world started to fade away.   Other people started to fade from existence and everything—your whole life—happened at work, with the people you worked with. Toby could not remember the last time he had a conversation with someone who worked outside of the west wing. They worked together, they ate together, and sometimes there were orgasms between them. Toby didn’t think about it too much, but he assumed that everyone else was having occasional sex—or regular sex, perhaps—with all the other coworkers. Sam and Josh were familiar with each other in a way that usually means long friendship, or current sexual interludes, or long friendship with sexual interludes. The meaningful glances between Josh and Donna were sometimes chopped up and fried for lunch when the mess was running low on actual food. All of the secretaries—Donna, Margaret, Carol, Ginger, Bonny—swapped information more quickly than mere gossip could travel. Toby assumed that there was a near constant stream of office news and orgasms in the ladies room. Even Leo and the President both seemed somehow tenser and more relaxed when the First Lady was out of town.

Or perhaps Toby was imagining all of that, simply because he and C.J. would occasionally discard their clothing and professionalism to attend to the demands of their bodies, so he assumed everyone else was as well.   Or perhaps he wasn’t imagining it. It was possible that C.J. had sex, on a rotating basis, with every staff member of the West Wing. Anyway, she wasn’t flirting with him. She was simply excited about something and he found it irresistible.

After they were seated for take off he realized that she was upset and preoccupied with something about her father. So now really wasn’t a good time. ( _She’s not flirting with you_ , Toby reiterated firmly.)   Then again, she seemed to be distracting herself with the prospect of butter sculpture irony, and if it was a distraction she wanted, he could provide one. Toby didn’t know how to ask her what she wanted from him (as if they ever talked about these things).

Then, later in the flight, when Toby was on his way somewhere, with a stack of papers in his hands, he was about to go up the stairs when he met C.J. coming down them. Her eyes flicked up and down his body in a way that he’d come to recognize. Toby cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows, frozen with his foot on the bottom stair. C.J. grabbed his sleeve and pulled him into the lavatory under the staircase. Toby reached behind him and fumbled with the lock until it clicked home.

“I could really use…” C.J. trailed off in a whisper.

Toby simply nodded.

It took some maneuvering. First he stacked his papers and C.J.’s folder on the floor against the door. Then he leaned her against the wall. He wanted to his mouth on her, but there wasn’t really enough room and his knees would never forgive him. Instead he contented himself with touching her, hiking up her skirt, and working his hand under the waistband of her panty hose. He reached down, stroking her until she started breathing faster, then gasping, her skin flushing red. C.J. shuddered and pawed at his hand to get him to stop. Her breathing was choppy and she stared at the ceiling for a moment before fixing him with her gaze. Before she had completely gathered herself her hand was on him, and a short while later he was coming into his own handkerchief. C.J. smiled at him, a smile not that different from her butter smile (This! This right here is how he got confused), and washed her hands.

“I’ve got work to do,” she said.

“Of course,” he murmured, and shuffled out of her way. She picked up her folder and strode out of the tiny lavatory.

Toby stood there for a while, collecting himself, and then he began to clean up.

This was all he had right now; he only had his work and the people he worked with. His world didn’t expand any further than the walls of the west wing, except when they went somewhere on air force one, and really, that was mostly a hallway that had detached itself from the west wing and launched itself in the air to carry them to Iowa. This was all he had right now.

It was all he wanted.


End file.
